Peekarama: Red Heat / Hot Vampire / Peeping Tom Review on DVD from Vinegar Syndrome!

I remember reading an interview with Ron Jeremy years ago when he lamented the loss of the porno film industry. As he stated, back in the Golden days, there’d be a full camera and sound set-up, a make-up person, lighting, the whole works. Nowadays a bloke with a camcorder (or a phone) can go to a hotel and film one. Well, like any industry in movies, there’s the big budget, then there’s those further down the money scale… Like a few that Vinegar Syndrome like to pop out. However, what we have isn’t just two people banging flesh with no story, we usually have a loosely structured tale. For instance, horror played a wonderfully big part in the porn machine around the 1970s. That and very ill-judged comedy.

I get that sometimes a cheap old ‘70s porn can have a sense of humour, but I fail to see how anybody of whatever decade could find the scene of an over dramatic hunchback tossing off over a girl who for some random reason is poking her finger into his balls, stimulating or comical. All accompanied by erotic music. It’s not even funny. The same goes for the churning mouthed moustache faced Dracula and the skinny lad who keeps his socks on throughout sex!!

As luck would have it, these delights are in film number two of a trio compiled by Vinegar Syndrome for their relentless Peekarama series. Movie one is an excellent lashing of hairy people having a lot of detailed sexual encounters plus Las Vegas scenery and murders. More of that soon. (Film two is unfortunately a lashing of ugly people having very ugly sex and probably smelling like the inside of a packet of peanuts!)

Here at Severed Cinema we like to indulge in a few grotty grim old school pornos once in a while. From the not supposed to be funny but surely is, Rapist Rampage (read review here) to the truly jaw dropping Hot Summer in the City (read review here) and The Taming of Rebecca (read review here) and of course a film proudly in my Top 20 of all time, Forced Entry (read review here). What links all of these assaults on your eyeballs? Hairy bodies and random music choices, for sure, but also the undercurrent of darkness. That NYC feel from back in the day (viewers of The Deuce TV series will get what I mean) is something I thrive off ever since I watched Basket Case and Combat Shock back in the late ‘80s on over copied VHS tapes. Mind you, this time round we’re in the dirty realms of Las Vegas.

Red Heat does indeed take us into the gambling and seedy world of 1970s Las Vegas, giving us a retro eyeful of advertising boards, cars, casinos, in fact just about everything you could imagine on the outside. Interiors are regulated solely to dingy stained motel rooms, etcetera. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The wraparound story is quite simple. Cindy Lou Strutters is a porn filmmaker, who hires not so much by looks and talent, but by whoever she can get when her budget gets low. She and her fella, who’s the camera man, have hit the streets shooting footage for their next little sweaty epics. “Little did we know there were some strange things going on in Vegas that would make our X-rated movie making seem like a fairy tale.” she says knowingly in narration. We move on to meet a model, Nancy, who looks like a man but is apparently female – a hairy one down below as everyone is in the Golden Age of body fur. Nancy likes making films because all of her previous husbands cannot satisfy her. Here comes a very lengthy and sticky pudding sex groping session for Cindy’s film as we hear directions being given to the players for that authentic behind the scenes setting.

“C’mon Nancy, put your mouth on it, it ain’t gonna bite you unless you bite it first.” as the wah-wah guitars blast out. I love porn music, like those interlude rock bands in the feature length Scooby Doo cartoons, totally unknown, vacant, yet so damn fun and compelling. The overdubbed moans and groans are way off as well. This is awesome! “C’mon, skinny, say something! Gimmi some lines!”

Reaching out to hire a fire maiden ginger called, Red Heat, she is rather annoyed that Red goes AWOL before the shoot. Red has soon after the interview caught her boyfriend cheating. He doesn’t really act all apologetic when she walks in on the sex. “What the fuck? You’re supposed to be at work, what the fuck? You dumb broad!” She replies with, “Motherfucker!” which she speaks through a closed mouth (gotta respect the overdubs again) as they grapple a bit. He then proceeds to beat the shit out of her as his Mistress runs off. Anyhow, Red stabs him to death in the shower and goes on a man killing rampage. A sub-plot involves a stranger in town who rides around on his motorbike robbing people at gunpoint.

Red Heat has lots of long hard deep hardcore sex scenes for its time, as our film crew film a lot of people whilst Red gorily kills men. The men are time capsules, with moustaches, open shirts, and such of that era. As for the sloppy slurping cock sucking noises that have been added on afterwards, I nearly choked my lungs up laughing so hard. A cool little mention has to be for the way the crew are running low on cash, they hire Nancy more and more ‘cause she’s cheap. They pay some really grim hookers and a washed out body builder kid, then the director herself has to become part of it, just to save money.

It’s a quirky gem well worth a giggle at. Shame about the next, thankfully very short helping of this director’s world of madness. Hot Vampire (aka The Mad Love Life of a Hot Vampire) gives out absolutely nothing it promises. It’s trying to be a laugh, yet it’s all so forced and pathetic. The sexual encounters have no soul, the blokes are monged out, wearing socks, looking shit, the women are bored, or trying not to chuckle. Dracula goofs his face into the forever zooming in camera when awoken by his yelling twitching epileptic hunchback who’s basically one irritating fucker, then after a lot of sex courtesy of his three girls (this is all narrated by his wife played by a regular face in front of director, Ray’s lens) and the punch-sack prick, he sends them out to collect blood. They suck a few men cocks, then gnaw into them, as the blokes cry in little puny voices. Gore all over and joke shop vampire teeth.

Meanwhile, there’s a fat Van Helsing dude who tracks Dracula down thanks to the undead sister of his friend. Stakes all around (missing said target chests), Dracula fades away in the sun, that’s about it. Existing only for truly disturbing copulation I think. Such horrors should not exist.

I’d rather have two choices than watch this again. Door Number One: have my penis chewed gorily to pieces like in this (using real fangs, not the crappy bendy fake ones as seen), or Door Number Two: drink the hunchbacks bum gravy.

Dracula is played by Jim Parker, a horror host from the Las Vegas region (hired for half a day by the looks of it). There’s some really up-tempo big band sounding tunes in this one, almost in time to the thrusting and the fiddling with private parts that really puts a broad smile on yer face.

Lastly we have Peeping Tom, shown as a very worn print for our vintage lusting eyes. Well, sometimes you can have a bit too much of the old fried chicken and wiggly lines, but Vinegar Syndrome have a certain way of doing things, y’know. To be fair, this and the Hot Vampire thing are really maggot level creations. Not in a totally bad way, you’d huddle into a dark wet corner somewhere in the 42^nd Street region and beat one out in your musty smelling raincoat whilst a drunk chap requested a few dollars, in return he’d suck you to climax in his toothless drooling mouth… ahem, yes, getting lost in my own thoughts there…

“The man you are looking at is known to the public as a weirdo.” states the excited narrator. Is this a documentary about me???!! “Unfortunately, the public don’t know what goes on in his mind…”

He’s got an appetite for watching couples making love. He’s a voyeur. We get to follow his adventures (helped by a sometimes out of focus lens, no seriously this makes it far more eerie and seedy) “You fuckin’ bastard.” hisses the female in our first couple as her fella arrives home late. “Who were you fuckin’ tonight? You motherfucker!” Seems she’s been at it elsewhere anyhow, so it isn’t long before they’re both doing the nasty, after a long drawl voiced exchange of insults and shit. Our hero watches through the window. Oh my God!! They still continue the back and forth insults and threats of lawyers whilst getting naked and fumbling around the bed. It’s insane, it’s distracting for anyone back then who’d get hot over a really starved looking man with a moustache losing his way round a sneering plump woman.

Back in the days of pornographic magazines, right, the centrefold female would be posed, looking however you wanted, but in the middle of her stomach, or lower depending her position, was a fucking staple that went rusty for some reason over time. A lot of the sexual scenes presented in these films have a staple in their centrefold. Distracting elements that probably put a lot of raincoats off their steady strokes.

His next stop off happens to be a four way roll. More arms and legs than you could care for, a big peach octopus writhing on a bed. Soon after there’s Van Helsing from the last one, shouting “Tell me to cum! Tell me to cum!” into the face of his lady friend. See what I mean about staples? He looks scarily like territories wrestling legend, Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler and a very untrustworthy used car salesman. His journey goes on, and on, with more naked couples, same places as the Hot Vampire, and a plot thinner than some of the men. Urgh, the dubbing goes really over the top on the slurping noises sometimes, one moment turned my stomach a bit.

Now then, trivia and pub quiz fans will love to know that the director, Ray Dennis Steckler also helmed the classic trashy Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, and The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and Became Mixed up Zombies. He was the man behind Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit‘ short, as well as Sinthia: The Devil’s Doll. Throughout the ‘70s he was responsible for a large output of thinly budgeted nudies such as these three and more.

Ed Wood who? Fuck that! Ray Dennis Steckler deserves a Tim Burton treatment very soon. I’ve read that Ray never really spoke about his adult films, but he shouldn’t be ashamed, they’re fun, kind of warm and homely in a strange way.

Vinegar Syndrome and their endless Peekarama releases do a wonderful job of giving off as close as possible the authentic feel of being the actual ‘70s person these were made for. My word, I could almost smell the dried semen and spilt alcohol around me. This DVD is worth its weight in chest hair for Red Heat. That one is a glorious excursion into dirt and has a few Deep Throat mentions as that little mammoth was rising around that time. The other two are like a side B and side C, but are there so you have to deal with them.